


Monuments, Historical and Contemporary

by melliyna



Category: Criminal Minds, Pundit RPF (US)
Genre: Dystopia, Gen, The 28th Amendment verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:07:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/pseuds/melliyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Inspired by the song <i>Monument Valley</i> by Drive By Truckers and by <a href="http://bessemerprocess.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://bessemerprocess.livejournal.com/"><b>bessemerprocess</b></a> especially for the fanmix from which the song came as well as the wonderful <a href="http://bessemerprocess.livejournal.com/27196.html#cutid1">28th Amendment Verse</a>, a rereading of which really did inspire this story (I hope this proves a good thing!). Also to <a href="http://raedbard.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://raedbard.livejournal.com/"><b>raedbard</b></a> for the links to <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/apocabigbang/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://community.livejournal.com/apocabigbang/"><b>apocabigbang</b></a> and such like.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Monuments, Historical and Contemporary

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song _Monument Valley_ by Drive By Truckers and by [](http://bessemerprocess.livejournal.com/profile)[**bessemerprocess**](http://bessemerprocess.livejournal.com/) especially for the fanmix from which the song came as well as the wonderful [28th Amendment Verse](http://bessemerprocess.livejournal.com/27196.html#cutid1), a rereading of which really did inspire this story (I hope this proves a good thing!). Also to [](http://raedbard.livejournal.com/profile)[**raedbard**](http://raedbard.livejournal.com/) for the links to [](http://community.livejournal.com/apocabigbang/profile)[**apocabigbang**](http://community.livejournal.com/apocabigbang/) and such like.

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fandom: criminal minds](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/tag/fandom:+criminal+minds), [fic](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/tag/fic), [fic: gen](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/tag/fic:+gen), [rating: r](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/tag/rating:+r)  
  
---|---  
  
_**[Fic: Criminal Minds: Monuments, Historical and Contemporary]**_  
**Title:** Monuments, Historical and Contemporary  
**Author:** [](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/profile)[**melliyna**](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/)  
**Fandoms:** Criminal Minds  
**Pairings:** None  
**Word Count:** 2,000  
**Rating:** R  
**Warnings:** Dystopia. That means violence, torture, character death and general dystopian themes.  
**Disclaimer:** Criminal Minds, the concept and the characters belong to their creator, CBS and their respective actors. I do this entirely for the fun of the enterprise, not for any profit.  
**Author's Note:** Inspired by the song _Monument Valley_ by Drive By Truckers and by [](http://bessemerprocess.livejournal.com/profile)[**bessemerprocess**](http://bessemerprocess.livejournal.com/) especially for the fanmix from which the song came as well as the wonderful [28th Amendment Verse](http://bessemerprocess.livejournal.com/27196.html#cutid1), a rereading of which really did inspire this story (I hope this proves a good thing!). Also to [](http://raedbard.livejournal.com/profile)[**raedbard**](http://raedbard.livejournal.com/) for the links to [](http://community.livejournal.com/apocabigbang/profile)[**apocabigbang**](http://community.livejournal.com/apocabigbang/) and such like.

The FBI was still there - though the uniforms may change, the bureaucracy remained. Files still needed filing, classifying and sorting. Forms still needed to be filled out, leave requests made, coffee machines fixed, air conditioners fixed. People still needed to be paid, to have someone in HR to evaluate potential applicants. And the people - they still drove their cars, made much of silly computer wallpaper, planned vacations and worried about their kids. The man with the loud ties in the office next door still appropriated staplers, pens and more pens and the woman with the collection of frog brooches still sang along to her iPod when no one else was in (and sometimes even when they were.

And Aaron Hotchner stood now upon the scaffold in a now public square in Quantico. Traitors Square, they called it, when they called it anything. It's where those who were supposed to be loyal would go to die, as a public example. What better, than the rebel, the 'American Pimpernel' The name had spread, in whispers in the dark and in the light, as phantom and yet as real as the stories of the League and the lists of those saved, smuggled across borders and boundaries. The list of names - some famous, most not but all human - all considered traitors to an American morality. Sodomite. Liberal. Heretic. Rebellious Slave. Rebellious Woman. Brands, countered by the spread of the list of the saved - those names that filtered through the cracks, even as the names of the rest of the League had not.

Aaron Hotchner, Hotch. The poster boy of both sides, for very different reasons who had given no names after a year imprisoned. No names at all. Not a word, some would whisper, afterwards. Now they stood silent, as he stood upon the gallows, composed in the sunlight. He would give them nothing, in his dignity and decency and there would be other stories. Of how he had made his interrogator weep for he had spoken of pity, of love. Of the words of God long forgotten.

SSA Aaron Hotchner, Hotch dies to protect his families. His country gives him a statue, in later years, but it does not tell of the tears of those who loved him.

-

It is an ordinary dictatorship and little changes, in some ways. But the books are gone. Some are saved, but there are great wastes of stories that are consigned to the flames. Garcia sometimes thinks of the books she left behind in the home she left behind. There's the signed Pratchett, the Sandman collection Hotch found for her one Christmas. The battered copies of _Where' s My Cow_ that were property of both Jack and Henry. Which brings another memory - Reid doing The Voices Right for both of them. Hotch, laughing and being silly with them. JJ, making it in to a dramatic performance. There had been a mess of toys, cookies and more cookies that was actually mostly Reid. Emily and Morgan, helping with the Cookies Operation. Rossi, who'd eventually been drawn in to these Christmas gatherings looking as though he was unsure why he was here or why he was happy but with the expression that if anyone interfered with this happiness, arms would be ripped off. Rossi, who patrols the border the rest of his life, after Hotch is gone. Endless walking through the wilderness, to protect and serve.

Penelope just looks through her books. Tolkien, gone. Harry Dresden, Harry Potter, every book about dragons. Ghost Girl. Every comic book not re-worked to an acceptable standard after the Hollywood Purges. That was before they started searching homes, before the mandates and the regulations and the burning of the libraries. They'd burnt some librarians, sometimes. Of course the administration expressed regret at the excessive force, without ever giving it anything but tacit approval. After all, hadn't they been given the chance to repent, to change their ways back to the path of righteousness.

The sharpness of the words of one of the new supervisors, when she teased Derek, only it wasn't about inappropriateness in the workplace at all but other words, Ugly words. Being in Canada, she knows her safety but Penelope Garcia will always grieve for the home she cannot return to. Not now, not after the blood that has been spilled. Not even to receive the medal they give to her. Goddess (of the League), her code name. The name the administration had plastered all over the nightly news, milk cartons and who knew what else. That doesn't change. Neither does the loss.

-

Emily Prentiss thinks she might understand _Slaughterhouse 5_ just a little more now. Not completely, because each war is an individual hell but she might have gotten the sense of it burned in to her nostrils, her skin. Everywhere. She knows how to clean all kinds of guns now - that's the smell that fills her mind. Semi automatics, rifles, colts, sniper weapons. Even crossbows and machine guns. It feels wrong, not be doing something with her hands, with her skills so she joins the border patrols for a while - close protection of possible targets for kidnap. She works with Morgan, they lead the group and everyone keeps an eye on Jack, who likes Morgan best, then Reid but he does like Emily - this warm and silent little boy who smiles like his father and moves like his mother.

He knows they've all lost a parent and thus, they meld together, this combination of families of Aaron Hotchner's and Emily wonders how she got adopted in to it all and when it became a valued thing to be lost. Maybe it is that they were all too close, too damaged and thus, they came together. But this little family of profilers was a good one. Even Rossi thought so, though he wouldn't have said it once upon a time. These days, David Rossi is trying to be better at expression, at articulation of emotion. He does better than you might think, at first glance.

She, JJ and Garcia. Sisters, they say and the history books might well make it fact. She wonders, about the gift of friends, the gift of coping and carrying on and what it means. She's the one who goes back, to collect the medals and to see the statues and not recognise herself in that bronze and iron woman. It seems strange, to be thought of a hero.

-

David Rossi will write. He writes to understand, to grapple, to grieve, to rage, to give voice to vengeance, to keep from putting a bullet in his brain, to give answers to Jack, to give answers to God and sometimes, it's all of those at once. Sometimes it's just that needs to pick up a pen or sit down at the keyboard but he writes and ironically, he becomes more famous for this than his chronicles of the profession he used to practice in, the one that faded from the public consciousness. He's not like Reid, who is drawn to the trials, to help and to study and to try and understand. David Rossi wants to be witness and to have others bear witness.

He wants to write of Aaron - of the bravery, of the dignity, of the kindness and decency of this man. Of the voices of those who helped and who never came home. The young student, who gave them a place to hide with no reason to and was dragged away, still screaming. Erin Strauss, who died a traitors death for loyalty. His team, his family who were broken and picked themselves up, entirely despite themselves. Elle, who is still out there, saving them all, even as she chooses who lives and who dies. Of the man in the ordinary office, with the tropical fish and the Far Side desk calendar, who'd turned JJ in.

The one who wept as the court read his crimes. The one who'd signed the death warrant. David Rossi will write of them all.

-

Jennifer Jareau remembers her full name as the final straw. Morgan remembers the epithet as the final straw. Go home, go back to your place as we see it. They'd wanted to take Henry away from her. From her, from Will, from the only family he'd known.

Morgan had wanted to quote the Bible at them. Cover to cover, chapter and verse, even the ones he'd never been sure about, but enjoyed debating with Emily. He'd want to quote Vonnegut or King. Or himself, actually, but they wouldn't have listened to a word from his lips, because they'd already decided upon the answers. Upon who he was, what he was. Carl Buford all over again, don't think Derek Morgan doesn't know that. He's going to keep his family safe though, have no doubts about that. Mom and sisters out of the country and the others? He's going to get them out, he'd vowed. JJ used to call him "Superman" with a smile and he'd teased her right back, in an admiring way. Because you keep your family safe, you keep the world that little bit more stable, that little bit better.

Derek Morgan, who wonders if he's ever going to be able to look Jack Hotchner in the eye and explain.

 

-

Reid doesn't quite understand himself why he continues this process of visits but he finds himself making the trek. Perhaps because he wants to prove again that he can still feel pity for them. For these other human beings, these broken people and not so broken people. Some of them still see nothing wrong with the deeds they have performed. Reid often thinks on balance, he might find these expressions of fundamentalist devotion to the cause - whether it was religious fervor, a particular brand of patriotism, sadism or something of all of those, less disturbing than those who are the opposite.

Some of them weep. Some express remorse. Some try to die and Reid thinks that there's a part of him that might despise them most of all. For they do not own their deeds. Though not as much as the ones who stood by and watched and thought it wrong. Hotch, hanged and tortured, Diana Reid - killed in one of the purges of the hospitals that the Special Prosecutor is still trying to untangle. He knows of her death but not where, not how, not the why. And not how the nurses could stand by, when they did not approve. How the parents of that young student who had helped them could have thrown up their hands until their daughters passion had overwhelmed them. How a population could live with themselves, when they walked through their towns and saw the marks on the lampposts, the scuff marks on the pavements, in the town squares where the gallows had been.

How they could build statues and memorials and think that by paying homage after the fact, they were doing an honor.


End file.
